The Situation
A large cardboard packaging manufacturing facility had suffered a catastrophic failure to the diecut gears in one of their critical rotary machines. The machine in question was manufactured in the early 1990’s in the USA, making it one of the oldest in the factory. The drive gears had broken down, likely caused by insufficient lubrication over the course
of their service lives. The machine OEM had quoted 4-5 weeks for manufacture with additional lead time to account for shipping from North America.
The customer was set to lose £24,000 per weekday and £6,000 per day over the weekends in revenue, meaning an alternative solution was needed urgently.
The Solution
The customer is serviced by a member of the HAYLEY DEXIS team based on-site at the facility. Working with the Senior Focus Engineer, the HAYLEY DEXIS on-site co-ordinator helped to prepare the gears and identified all of the material requirements before sending these to the machine shop for sourcing to begin.
The machine was stripped and collected by the HAYLEY 247 DEXIS engineering services team before both they and before both they and gear manufacturing specialists, Lamond & Murray, worked day-and-night to get the customers’ machine back online as quickly as possible.
Gears were reverse engineered, machining work completed, and the new components returned to site within sixteen days of the failure occurring. Two servo motors were also overhauled as part of the project, while the machine was out of order.
"A TOTAL OF £252,000 OF REVENUE LOSS WAS AVOIDED THANKS TO THE MINIMISED DOWN TIME"
The Result
Thanks to the close working relationship that the customer has with HAYLEY DEXIS, and the fact that an employee is permanently based on-site, HAYLEY DEXIS were quickly able to promptly assist the customer in a time of urgent need.
With the machining work carried-out by HAYLEY 247 DEXIS and reverse engineering by fellow DEXIS Europe company, Lamond & Murray, the breadth of skills and knowledge available to HAYLEY DEXIS customers was truly showcased on this project.
The total period that the rotary machine was offline for was reduced by ten weekdays and four weekend days. This equates to a total of £252,000 of revenue loss being avoided. With the newly-refurbished servo motors also now operating, the risk of future breakdowns impacting the operation of the machine has been considerably reduced.